Approaching the familiar through the unfamiliar.
It always stuck with me how a saxophone player described gaining a whole new perspective on saxophone playing by doing an in-depth study of trumpet players.
By stepping into the unfamiliar, and necessarily translating back into the ‘familiar’, we are required to invent a new language of our own – new words, new colors, new imagery, new tools.
Nothing more instructive than dwelling in a foreign country for a while.
Or camping out in the wilderness.
Because of this, I love to explore that unfamiliar terrain in the arts. Stepping out….One of such explorations takes place when we ‘step out’ from one art form into another. Creating music perhaps, but thinking of creating a poem. The language of poetry becomes the overriding principle, and all music ‘rules’ and history have to cede to that. In effect, all music rules have been suspended and replaced only by concerns of poetic language. New music ‘rules’ might have to be invented, or adapted.
There are endless excursions we can make like that, mixing up two or more art forms:
Listen to a free improvisation, structured – or freely composed -, partly as a poem, partly as a painting, partly as an architectural sculpture.
We might see a still… a moment in black and white, light evoking silence.
…Hear a poem, thrusts of meaning singing off the page, slowly filling the empty space between our beacons of known meaning.
(to be continued)